


the apple unbitten in the palm

by astronicht (1Boo)



Series: I have some questions for the cosmonauts [2]
Category: Star Trek, Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 14:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12367782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1Boo/pseuds/astronicht
Summary: Week One: TrashfireOr, Yuuri Katsuki inherits and co-parents a starship.





	the apple unbitten in the palm

**Author's Note:**

> title from a larkin poem. 
> 
> Please let me know if I misuse trek terminology. I haven't watched properly in years, so my knowledge is way more faded than I thought it was.

At first, Yuuri is very busy and mostly just fascinated with Nikiforov’s dog. His space dog. In later months and years he will regret not noticing a few other things that first week, but he will never regret meeting Makkachin.

“It’s not a space dog,” Pichit says. They’re in the canteen, and it’s only because Pichit had his minions track Yuuri down and Yuuri had to come with them to lunch or else explain that the ten minutes he’d just spent crying in the lavatory had probably been the most restful all week.  “That’s like calling people aliens. It’s not an alien dog, either.”

Pichit is a good friend, even if he’s making Yuuri eat when Yuuri’s stomach is in fifteen knots.

Makkachin is a dog the size of a shoebox, with very shaggy fur, a unicorn horn, and pink poison spines in a ridge down its back. Yuuri’s not sure of her gender, or if she has one, but the captain uses female pronouns. “That tail I’ve only seen occur on aquatic specimens,” Yuuri mutters finally.

“Now, if you’re gonna call her strange, that’s okay,” Pichit says, barely paying attention anymore as he tries to coax the replicator into giving him some of the good chili sauce.

“Makkachin’s not strange!” Yuuri shouts. Over by another replicator, someone who looks a lot like Yuuri’s disgruntled turbolift engineer accidentally throws his oatmeal bites on the floor.

There is an ecstatic bark from behind Yuuri, and then Makkachin herself bounces over to eat them. The ensign glares around the entire room and storms off.

“I didn’t know the captain was here,” says Yuuri slowly, trying not to look like he’s feverishly scanning the canteen.

“That’s because you avoid him,” Pichit told him helpfully. “Also he definitely heard you.”

Yuuri chokes.

“Don’t worry,” Pichit continues, “I think he’s happy you’re defending his space dog.”

Dogs were new to Yuuri when he came to Earth, and San Francisco. Back home, the kids played with a variety of weirtoo snakes, mostly. There are pictures of Mari in their mom’s lap, wearing snakes like bracelets, her little lap overflowing with them.

All pets are good, is Yuuri’s firm belief. It’s just that dogs specifically were a revelation.

Captain Nikiforov beams down at them. “Hello, Chulanont! Hello, Yuuri!”

He rudely turns his back on Pichit; Pichit checks out his ass and gives Yuuri a thumbs up. “Yuuri, I am glad you wanted to know! Makkachin is an Alfa 177 Canine. Very rare, very beautiful!”

Nikiforov is effusive in everything he does, everything he says. Yuuri is quietly furious at him for it, because that sort of thing translates directly into charisma, and he’s only been here a week and already everyone seems content to revolve around him. It’s not even _going well_ , is the thing. Oh sure, he’s a brilliant diplomat, but this transfer has been a week of one unmitigated disaster after another, a hell broken only by occasional glimpses of the space dog.

Makkachin humps his ankle gently and he reaches down to pet her, hoping to be soothed. Yuuri is pretty used to headaches, but the one that appears whenever he sees Nikiforov is starting to become ridiculous.

Also, Nikiforov is beautiful, and that’s just rude. He wears his uniform impeccably, along with crisp white gloves and hair just long enough to flip a little when he turns, but neat enough that he looks suave and professional. It’s silvery, almost metallic, but listed as blond on his personnel file. His accent, too -- Yuuri’s is strong and easy to make fun of on a Terran-based Federation ship, but Nikiforov’s is what Pichit calls Russo-Terran, and what Yuuri calls definitely not hot at all.

Unfortunately, all of that is wasted, because Nikiforov is currently the bane of Yuuri’s life.

The long pause after the dog commentary in which Yuuri is musing on this makes even Nikiforov look a little awkward, just in one corner of his smile.

“Actually -- Katsuki, I’d like to talk after lunch hour. Meet me in conference room 2235, please.”

That’s literally at the ass-end of nowhere near Engineering, but sure. Fine. Yuuri nods.

“Yes, captain.”

Nikiforov takes Makkachin the space dog and leaves. Yuuri trails after Pichit and accepts his plate of curry, and hopes the chili sauce Pichit has lovingly applied to both their helpings will clear his head as well as his sinuses.

 

It takes him about half an hour to get his ass all the way across the ship and down to the conference room Nikiforov named, and on the way he’s stopped five times with complaints. No one’s been told when to prep for new coordinates, security hasn’t been briefed on Nikiforov at all, paid vacation hasn’t been approved in five weeks, and they shouldn’t be waiting on coordinates at all because if they don’t take on parts for core rods as soon as physically possible, thermal control will bust on two more levels and more of Yuuri’s ship will be a little on fire.

He arrives in the hallway just as Nikiforov reaches the door, and Yuuri can immediately tell that the room is already occupied, the two minds inside like a flash in the corner of his eye. He sighs.

“It’s taken, do you mind just doing this in the hall? Or tomorrow?” Yuuri begins to ask.

“What do you mean?” asks Nikiforov, turning the door handle anyway. For fuck’s sake.

Yuuri peeks in.

“Hello, Ensign… Plisetsky?” Nikiforov is saying. He doesn’t greet the second person, and when Yuuri steps in he finds out why. No one else is there.

He scrunches up his face and shakes his head. His Captain Nikiforov headache is back right on schedule, but beyond it, he could swear, he’s still hearing the mental buzz of two people here.

“Probably a hallucination,” Yuuri tell himself matter-of-factly. Nikiforov and Plisetsky glance at him, but something in his dead-eyed stare seems to put them off any investigation.

Honestly, of course he feels two people: Nikiforov and the engineering ensign -- who seems supremely unlucky, keeps running into Yuuri when he’s at max breakdown points. In his current state, it’s little surprise it took him a minute for his brain to notice Nikiforov’s presence.

Since his ship is still literally on fire and he still feels like he’s waiting for Minako to come back and fix everything, he figures hallucinations are really a minor incident.

“Sorry about your lunch,” Yuuri tells Plisetsky, because the kid obviously didn’t think he’d be disturbed in here, and is only halfway through a tray of food.

“Wow, thanks Commander,” Plisetsky says in the tone of a person who never should’ve joined an organization that operates within a strict hierarchy. He’s super agitated, ready to vibrate out of the room, it feels like. Yuuri tries vainly to tune it out.

Nikiforov smiles at Plisetsky. It’s blinding. “Please get out,” he says very rudely,  in a very polite tone of voice. Yuuri has noticed that he does this a lot.

Plisetsky snarls at them both -- thanks, Nikiforov -- and shoves his way out the door, holding his lunch tray like a battering ram.

Yuuri might look into why an engineering ensign is hiding in a conference room that hasn’t been used for anything since what was probably an orgy/birthday party among the medics in Yuuri’s first year aboard. (He did not go.)

Well. He’ll look into it after he’s done handling the pygmy corn blight that’s broken out in his favorite specimens, the HR disaster that is unfolding among the nurses (some sort of Romeo and Juliet scenario with two camps ready to throw down at shift change), the encoded messages they’ve been receiving, apparently, from a quasar in the Alpha quadrant that Nikiforov keeps leaving in his inbox, even though he just sends them on to Pichit.

(Pichit shrugged, and said “I dunno man, it doesn’t seem to be language but it’s a pretty awesome techno bop, once you’ve gotten used to it” and burned his assistant a mixtape).

Part of the _Gagarin_ is literally on fire on the 23rd recreation deck, which he’s been assured isn’t as bad as it sounds and mostly means everyone’s stopped playing Pluverian pingpong and started playing something on another rec floor called Plek’et that Yuuri cannot goddamn fathom.

He hasn’t actually gone anywhere near his own laboratories all week, despite also never spending more than two hours in his room at a time. His baby corn is dying, he’s got quasar music stuck in his head, and the Nikiforov migraine is bearing down with such force that he can’t feel anything from anyone anymore. He doesn’t want to be here; not in this conference room, not in space, not on this ship. Except he’s staying, because Minako was right. _His ship_ . And Nikiforov is fucking _his ship_ up, and Yuuri is powerless. Powerless to run it on his own, powerless to stick up to Nikiforov and tell him what a poor job he’s actually doing, powerless to figure out who his new subordinates are so he could maybe pawn some things off, even though his pride just won’t let him.

He sighs, pinches his nose and sets his glasses askew. Tries to breathe it out, let it go; even if all he’s left with is the cold, frightened lump in his stomach.

“So, I’m meeting all my officers, Yuuri,” says Nikiforov. He says Yuuri’s name a lot. Maybe a leftover grammar habit from his first language. He’d have to ask Pichit. “You are one of my officers. And what do you do?” says Nikiforov.

“Uhm, aeroponics,” croaks Yuuri, and maybe he fails to mention that he is also Nikiforov’s first officer. In his defense, shouldn’t Nikiforov know?

“And what should I know about you, Yuuri?” Nikiforov says with that smile again. The diplomat smile. He taps his fingers on the table in his crisp white gloves.

“I… don’t know?” Yuuri manages. “Sorry, my head--”. All seven senses are swimming. His ears are ringing.

“Oh.” A pause. Yuuri’s eyes are closed. “Are you ill?” he asks, polite.

“Ah, well, it hurts to look at you,” Yuuri says without really thinking it through.

His eyes shoot open.

“Uh, not like--”

“Oh,” says Nikiforov. “Oh, well. I should let you get to medbay if it’s that… bad.”

It kinda is that bad, so Yuuri takes the exit even though he shouldn’t. His mom would be so disappointed.

“Sure. Captain. I’ll uh, I’ll be in touch,” he says inanely, and scrambles out of his chair and into the hall.

 

He checks into medbay and sets up an email forward system that bounces all messages he gets to Nikiforov’s padd, and falls asleep.


End file.
